


Benediction

by halbeshaus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halbeshaus/pseuds/halbeshaus
Summary: I was laid to rest in the churchyard behind my house one summer night. Crows flew overhead in the blackening sky. Father Joab stood over me in his long black robes. He blessed me as I was lowered into the earth. He blessed me while Jezebel shook from the weight of oblivion overcoming her. He blessed me as Solomon watched, too young to understand what was happening.





	Benediction

We were so much younger when the sky broke in two. The fields of gold that had made up my flesh burnt down one night — the veins of tarmac filtering through my only retreat. My bones, filled with hatred and crackling with blood, were my home.

I was laid to rest in the churchyard behind my house one summer night. Crows flew overhead in the blackening sky. Father Joab stood over me in his long black robes. He blessed me as I was lowered into the earth. He blessed me while Jezebel shook from the weight of oblivion overcoming her. He blessed me as Solomon watched, too young to understand what was happening.

When it was over, Father Joab pulled me up by the wrists and sent me home. He told me to repeat the new words I’d learnt. I washed my clothes in the kitchen sink, tongue tracing Latin grammar on the roof of my mouth. Dirt stained the water red as it spiralled in the basin.

I left not long after. Fires had brought the church walls down and turned gold into ashes. The hillsides were thick with ashes on all sides. Grey smoke hung in the valley like an inescapable fog. I stole the water Joab had give me, told Jezebel to mind her own and walked for days in one direction. The ashes didn’t fade, the smoke didn’t lift. When I asked, I was told the fires had spread right across the world.

It was years before I felt I could come back to the village. I was skinnier and taller, underfed and wearing the same stained clothes I had been buried in. 

Father Joab had been waiting for me. Jezebel and Solomon stood behind him, smiles tight over their faces. They were older too, Solomon reaching Joab’s shoulder if he stretched his back out straight. Jezebel’s eyes were searching me, hoping.

“My boy,” Joab said, his arms outstretched as if it had only been a day since I had seen him last. “You haven’t changed at all.”

On Saturday I took the cross from his neck and wore it round my wrist like a trophy. By Sunday, my rosary had found its way out of my hands and into his pockets. His teeth had yellowed with time. Hands had roughened.

I went back to the house I shared with Jezebel and Solomon after mass. The wheat field Jezebel and I had played in when we were children was torn down into dirt. From my bedroom window, I could see Solomon hacking circles with a hoe where we prayed the new wheat would grow. He was only a boy, as young as I had been when I had left here, and riddled with the misguided determination that stopped any self preservation from taking control. He moved further into the field, into an area hidden by the rebuilt Church that stood now strong.

I took my place in Jezebel’s room. Her body curled up on the mattress by the door and was covered in thick blue blankets that would save her once the cold of winter set in. I sat down, leant against the cold wall of the hearth. The grey stone sucked all the warmth out of me.

Joab was out in the manse, tending to the people who still were coming to seek refuge from the fires. The dog collar around his neck spoke miracles, and he had been trained well. When you looked at him, there was nothing about him that spoke deceit.

But Joab still smiled with his pointed teeth whenever he saw me. He’d say, “Gabriel, my boy. You’ve come back,” whenever he tore me away from everyone else. But not tonight. No, tonight I would wait by Jezebel’s side and make a home for myself on the rotting floors of her bedroom.

She moved in her sleep, as if knowing she was in my thoughts. The light of day cast everything but her in shadows. Her skin was clean, her body young and pure and alive. Heart beating with fervour in her chest. Then me, unworthy in the dark corner of a room in an attempt to hide how worn my clothes were, but instead exposing the purple stains on my thighs. Though Solomon was nowhere near us, I knew his body was unburdened by such pains. He was too much like Jezebel. He had seen me die that night in the churchyard but he didn’t know why. He was so much younger than Jezebel and I, and we were so much younger then. Solomon was something greater than us. He had the ignorance of his youth to protect him. He had been brought up in the ashes left by the fires I ran away from. He saw no wrong in the flames, nor in the ashes which now covered thick the earth. I thought back to Father Joab and all those people seeking refuge from the grey smoke, the ash, and the flames — how laughable it all was. No-one knew who started the fires, and yet still here they came.

No-one knew but Joab and I.

Jezebel. Poor, sweet Jezebel. She didn’t know that there was a gun in this room, underneath the floorboards in the church, at the bottom of the grave Joab had had dug out for me. She didn’t understand that I was left a time bomb, that my rotting flesh was a warning; a result of the caress of the flames. She didn’t know the extent of what was done.

There was a bible on the floor. Left half read by Solomon before church that day. I didn’t need to open it up to see what page it was bookmarked on. From my memories of those hazy nights before, I read aloud:  
“Matthew, 10:34. Do not think that I came to send peace upon the earth. I came not to send peace, but the sword.”

I closed my eyes at the sound of it. The weight hit me of memories of green hills, blue sky and Father Joab smiling with warmth the only intention in his chest.

The front door opened and closed with a crash. Solomon. He threw his hoe down on the stone floor of the hallway and kicked the ash and mud off his shoes. I opened my eyes. In the doorway of Jezebel’s room he stood: pale and unafraid, unaffected by the ash which haunted me.

He looked at me as if he didn’t really see me sitting there. Like I didn’t really fold back in on myself that night. His gaze burnt through me, tore me apart and pulled me back together with the blink of his eyes. The floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved across the room. He slumped down beside me, resting his head on my shoulder. There was a fire raging in his chest, I could feel the heat of it through my clothes. It was like the fire that Joab had unleashed from me.

“Gabriel,” he whispered. “I don’t know what I’m meant to do.”

I laughed out my breath. The world crashed down around me — everything that remained from before in that instance was stolen away and buried in that hole in the ground.

I said nothing, but turned my head to see Solomon. My hand came up to brush his cheek. Fear was shaking either my hands or him, I couldn’t tell who out of the two of us it was radiating from. He looked up at me, cheek grazing my collarbone. His eyes were wide, grey and unyielding. He was unloved, as yet untouched. But I knew the weight on his chest. I recognised the slack look on his face as one I had worn many years before.

I opened my mouth to speak, saying nothing more than the words I have said before. I kept them quiet, so as not wake Jezebel from where she had buried her head in the sand through sleep. She didn’t need to hear them again. But Solomon had missed out on Joab’s rule over us. Jezebel had kept him away even though I never told her why. Joab was for me, not Solomon. Jezebel could see that well enough.

“The sword,” I said, pushing the hand that wasn’t holding Solomon flat against the ground. The metal of Joab’s cross clanked against the floor. “In the forest behind the church. Across the fields."

Solomon pressed himself further against me. Arm falling across my waist as his shoulders shook. My sleeve grew wet beneath his eyes. He was only fourteen, but so much older than I could ever bring myself to be. He was untouched by anything that had ever meant to damage me.

“Joab will be coming back soon,” I said.

Solomon stilled. To him, Joab had only ever been his dog collar; nothing more than the black robes he wore and his silvering hair. My words were confirmation. He didn’t move for a long time. The sun cast gold against the walls when he finally made to move. He looked at Jezebel, lying still on her mattress, laden in virgin blue, then back to me. Finally, he turned to the doorframe and gazed out to the wheat fields that were beginning to sprout gold once more through the ashes.

“He’ll be looking for you?” Solomon asked.

I shook my head. Looked down at the boy held fearful against me. “No,” I said. “He’ll be looking for the sword.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, come find me on tumblr: https://halfbloodsev.tumblr.com


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